The Ghosts of Faithful
2019 INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD: RELIGION FICTION
Poets % Writers Magazine Maureen Egen Award, First Runner-Up
When "The Ghosts of Faithful" won First-Runner-up for Poets and Writers Magazine's Maureen Egen Award, it was a novel in progress. Now it is my seventh published novel, and has won the 2019 INDEPENDENT PRESS AWARD:Religion Fiction.
Here's what Victor La Valle, author, Professor at Columbia, and Judge of the contest had to say about it: "Faithful" suggests a broad canvas--a well-rendered local; a promising war of equals in the characters, a clear desire to address/tackle the issues larger than the back and forth, and a clear understanding on the author's part about pacing and clarity. Also, I thought the father's chapter was really funny!"
About the completed novel:
Izzy Collier runs the Food Bank in a town called Faithful, on the banks of the Suwannee River. She is the least amicable of two daughters in a frustrating family; all, keeping secrets of betrayal.
Her parents are at odds with both daughters, and with each other. Her sister, always Izzy’s competition, is an unstable former beauty queen, the wife of a philanderer, and the mother of four.
Now, their ninety-four year-old grandmother sees her dead husband’s ghost, accompanied by a strange little girl. At the same time, Izzy’s husband, a defense lawyer, is being forced by his boss to
effect the acquittal of a teenager accused of the rape and murder of a child. When Izzy starts to see her deceased grandfather and the little girl, too, she questions her sanity. What if the little
girl ghost is the murdered child? But then, why would she be with Izzy's grandfather? Are the ghosts after revenge, justice, or something greater?
Free Article and Short Story for Readers
A lot has been said recently about The Catholic Imagination. If you'd like me to send you an PDF article with my own views concerning The Catholic Imagination, please go to my Contact page and request it.
PRAISE:
"Kaye Park Hinckley's novel, A Hunger in the Heart, is a story of hope, forgiveness, and redemption. It's a great read in the tradition of southern fiction."
Winston Groom, Author of Forrest Gump and Shiloh, 1862
"Kaye Park Hinckley is a writer with a sensitive ear and a keenly developed sympathy for her characters. Her debut novel, A Hunger in the Heart, marks the beginning of a promising career in the world of fiction.
Mark Childress, author of Georgia Bottoms and Crazy in Alabama
"In the tradition of Flannery O’Connor, Robert Penn Warren, & Walker Percy, A Hunger in the Heart by Kaye Park Hinckley brings alive the south and the search for meaning and forgiveness."
Peter Mongeau, Publisher, Tuscany Press
Hinckley's characters are complicated. They've done horrible things, witnessed horrible things, been
the victims of horrible things, yet they continue rising each morning and putting one foot in front of the other. They fulfill their obligations to each other while these horrible things gnaw at them
from the inside out. Hinckley deftly presents the repulsiveness of her character's actions, while also revealing her characters' drive toward love. Fully developed plots and well-rounded
characters. --Lake Oconee Living
The short stories in Birds of a Feather are richly imagined tales full of finely drawn characters who demonstrate how people estranged from faith can bumble through life so distracted by worldly horrors and delights, so full of themselves, that they don't even notice faint nudges of grace that stir in their souls or recognize subtle emanations of the holy that abound in the world around them.--The Catholic World Report
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